


I'm Gonna Find You at The End of The World

by cascades (heartroots)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-09
Updated: 2009-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 16:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartroots/pseuds/cascades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways Leonard McCoy could have met Jim Kirk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Gonna Find You at The End of The World

**ONE.**

It’s 0730 and Leonard McCoy is sitting in a bar in the middle of fucking _nowhere_ , A.K.A. Riverside, Iowa, with only a suitcase, the clothes on his back, a massive headache, and his medical license to his name. He’s tempted to ask the bartender how the hell he ended up in this place, how his life brought him _here_ , of all places, but he’s not going to be that drunkard. He’s slipped pretty low in the past year, but that’s a line of pathetic he’s determined not to cross. 

If he’s learned anything from the aforementioned slippery slope to ruin that was the last year of his life, drowning your sorrows in whiskey is ultimately more effective than pouring them out to random bartenders. He might be a complete mess of a human being right now, but he’s still got the minimum self-control it takes to keep himself from falling apart in public. 

Mostly. 

He doesn’t _do_ maudlin displays of emotion. He figures that’s part of the reason why his marriage crashed and burned so spectacularly. She was a fan of those. 

He takes a sip of his drink, as he’s been doing since the divorce every time he hears, or thinks, the word “marriage”, or any other word that even remotely reminds him of it. 

It’s a system. 

Of course, he’s done his share of psych rotations over the years, so he knows that he’s a textbook example of a self-destructive response to depression; he knows he should stop and get help, should find more constructive ways to deal with this, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to fix it. He likes being selfish for once. 

Then again, seeing as he’s here and not at a bar back home, he’s already taking a step towards “fixing it”. It’s just another distraction, but it’s a distraction that’s a million times better for him than the drinking. He might not be ready to be entirely mentally stable just yet, but he’s damn ready to get his life back in order. He misses being a doctor. In fact, he misses it far more than he misses her, and if that doesn’t tie the failure of their relationship up with a nice, neat little bow, he doesn’t know what does. 

Damn it. He needs to stop thinking about her. 

He takes another drink and sighs contentedly when he feels his pounding headache start to ebb. If he can say one thing for alcohol, it does numb the pain. And it calms nerves, which he definitely needs right now. What the fuck is he thinking? He’s not cut out for this life. For the sixth time since he got here this morning, he runs all the ways he could die, painfully and gruesomely, because of the choice he’s making through his mind again. 

Oh, right. That’s why he started drinking. 

He hears the double doors of the bar _swoosh_ open, but doesn’t look up. Most people drinking before 8 AM don’t want an audience, or a friendly chat. 

However, he _does_ look up when the stranger pulls up a barstool right next to him. 

It’s a younger guy. Couldn’t be more than 25; McCoy resents him for it immediately. (This is a reaction he’s been having increasingly often as he draws closer and closer to 30.) He’s got faint scars overlaid with bruises all over his face, a healing split lip, and drops of dried blood on his shirt. Apparently, he hasn’t been home since the last time he got beaten to a pulp. 

The bartender pours him a drink as soon as he sees him, and the kid thanks him with a nod. Obviously a regular. 

“Hey.” The kid looks over at him, a faint air of a smile floating over his features even though he’s not actually smiling. McCoy is struck by how blue his eyes are. 

“What?” he snaps, although he doesn't sound quite as irritable as he was going for.

The kid doesn’t seem to mind his vitriol, as he keeps talking. “I didn’t think anyone else’d be in here this early. You’re not one of the regular drunks.”

McCoy snorts. This kid’s got nerve. “You just called me a drunk. If I was less self-aware I’d probably be punching you right now.” 

The kid makes an amused sound. He takes a drink, sets his glass down with a _clink_ , and licks his lips. They’re bruised and swollen and chapped; McCoy feels phantom pains in his lips just looking at them. Kid must have a pretty high threshold for pain. 

“I’m used to it. Just one of the dangers of being me. Happens just as often as you’d think.” He smiles and gestures vaguely at his person, indicating his recently-beat-up appearance. At least he’s aware of it. He takes another sip of his drink, looks at McCoy and, after a deliberate pause, says, “No one drinks in the morning without good reason. Whether they know it or not.” 

McCoy can’t argue with that. He sighs. “I’m doing something really fucking stupid. You?” 

“Same.” 

They both take a drink, and then there’s silence. It’s comfortable, though. The kind that happens often between two strangers in a bar who are both equally lost. 

The kid speaks again, low and monotonous, quoting a phrase McCoy has heard a hundred times before: “‘A peace-keeping, humanitarian armada.’ Sounds heroic doesn’t it? If only I believed that shit, this’d be a lot easier.” 

McCoy laughs humorlessly. “Well, fuck me. What are the odds.” 

“Of fucking you? Hopefully pretty good,” the kid says with a leer. 

McCoy rolls his eyes. “Wrong. Keep it in your pants.” 

“Too bad. The odds of what, then?”

“I’m enlisting, too. God help me.” McCoy says, and then downs half his drink in one gulp. Saying it out loud just made it way too real for him to handle even the tiniest bit sober. 

“Odds are better than you’d think, actually,” the kid pauses again, and this time his tone is serious, uncertain. A little imploring. “Do you have any idea what the hell _you’re_ doing? ‘Cause I don’t.” 

“Nope. Not a damn clue.”

“I’ll drink to that.” 

“Cheers.” 

They clink their glasses together, and when the kid licks his lips again and smiles at McCoy with his stupidly blue eyes, McCoy realizes that the odds of the former are a lot better than you’d think as well.

“Jim Kirk,” the kid says, offering his hand. 

“McCoy. Leonard McCoy.” 

They shake, and McCoy notices Jim’s calloused hands; his firm, confident grip. It’s the most human contact he’s had in an embarrassingly long while. It feels good. Grounding, somehow. 

Maybe this won’t be as bad as he thought. 

They sit next to each other on the shuttle and when Jim just looks at him like he's trying not to laugh as McCoy lists off all the ways they could die, painfully and gruesomely, in space, he knows it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

**TWO.**

McCoy is sitting at the bar of some trendy club off campus. It was 2:20 AM the last time he was sober enough to care to check the time, so it’s probably edging into 3 AM territory now. 

It’s expertly dim in the club, all the right harsh strobes and soft glows culminating in lighting strategically designed to make even the most unfortunate-looking patron good enough for a drunken one night stand. There’s some generic, substance-less dance music pounding through speakers throughout the club; if McCoy was sober, it’d probably be giving him a killer headache. As it is, it’s still annoying him enough to make him want to leap into a rant on Kids Today that’d make his grandfather weep with shame. 

And speaking of age, every person there, including the bartenders, is at least seven to ten years younger than him. Young enough that they probably still think drinking is just for _fun._

Amateurs, McCoy thinks as he knocks back his drink without so much as a twitch. 

When yet another girl he’s old enough to have fathered starts aggressively flirting with him (the fourth so far tonight; one of them had three tits, and boy, was she hard to turn down. Purely from a curious, medical standpoint, of course), he decides it about time to leave. He turns down the beautiful brunette as politely as he can, but she doesn’t seem too disappointed. In fact, she doesn’t seem at all deterred by the rejection, considering she winks at him as she walks away. It’s possible she didn’t even realize that _was_ a rejection. 

McCoy sighs. Perfect Southern manners aren’t always the most useful thing. 

McCoy is slowly realizing that going out tonight was a monumentally stupid idea. He had figured that since he did so well on his most recent surgical exam, the one that he’d spent weeks preparing for and stressing and losing sleep over, he deserved a night out. What he hadn’t factored into this decision was that he doesn’t have any friends to spend a night out _with._ Sure, he has a good number of colleagues in the medical department that he’s friendly enough with, but they aren’t the kind of people he wants to go out and get blindingly drunk with, and they probably don’t want to get drunk with him either, so they’re even.

McCoy finishes his drink with a grimace and taps the bar to signal the bartender for another. By now, he’s lost count of how many he’s had. He does know, however, that he hasn’t gotten this drunk in public since he first made the decision to uproot his entire train wreck of a life and join Starfleet. Since then, he’s been on the straight and narrow. Studying, applying himself, making a new life. Trying very, very hard to forget his past. 

Still, he knows he should have made at least one or two friends by now; he’s been at the Academy for six months. But he’s been so busy, too busy to be lonely. He can’t afford not to be busy. When he’s not busy, he ends up somewhere in the vicinity of depressed, angry, nostalgic, and self-hating, a condition he treats by drinking himself numb and then passing out. 

After all the isolation and alcohol abuse he’s imposed on himself over the past year, it’s amazing he even remembers how to talk to other people. 

McCoy is just about to down his new drink, put his money on the counter and get the hell out of there when a young male cadet plops down on the barstool next to him and slings an arm around his shoulder. 

McCoy can feel his eyebrow shoot up into his hairline. 

“Uh, kid? I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” he says. He tries to shrug the man’s arm off but he just holds tighter, fingers firmly gripping the curve of McCoy’s shoulder. 

“Nope, you’re exactly who I’m looking for,” the kid says with a smirk. He meets McCoy’s skeptic gaze with an unnerving intensity. McCoy is startled by how blue his eyes are, even in the low light of the club. 

The girls who were hitting on him earlier could learn a thing or two from this kid. Not many guys can pull off the cocky, confident vibe without coming off as total asses. 

“Okay. Who am I, then?” McCoy asks, amusement evident in his tone. What harm can come from playing along? He’s drunk enough to be a little reckless for once. 

The kid smiles, slow and sexy as all hell, an expression McCoy can’t help but think he perfected by practicing it in a mirror. Time well spent. The smile fades and he licks his lips, leans towards McCoy and says, “You’re the guy who’s going to be fucking me tonight.” 

McCoy’s eyebrow and cock respond accordingly to the breathy, dirty way the kid says fuck. It rolls of his tongue so smooth and lewd, calling up images of bare skin on crisp, white sheets and ragged breathing and filthy, panted curses. 

McCoy shifts in his seat, but his face is set in determination. He’s not going to let the kid win this easily. He forces a snort, trying to sound unimpressed. “Is that so?” he asks, taking a sip of his drink. The kid watches his lips on the glass, eyes his Adam’s apple as he swallows and lick his lips in time with McCoy. His attention is so _focused_ that McCoy is sure he now knows what his specimens in the lab must feel like. 

“Yes. We’re going to go back to your place, I’m going to suck your cock, and then you’re going to fuck me until I come so hard I see all the stars and planets and black holes in the Federation’s jurisdiction.” He says this with a smirk, like he knows how ridiculous it sounds but just doesn’t care. 

Normally, McCoy would laugh at someone with a line that corny, but somehow the kid makes it work. Somehow he makes you believe it. 

The rough timbre of his voice doesn’t hurt. Jesus, he even _sounds_ like sex. 

McCoy laughs anyway, even as his entire body throbs with the heat of the kid’s words. “Never heard that one before. Although, you know you can’t _see_ a blackhole.” 

“Maybe orgasms are the answer to that problem.”

McCoy snorts. “Sure. Good luck presenting that theory to the Vulcan Science academy.” 

“I’m sure they’d find it fascinating. Now, are we fucking or not? I appreciate the banter, but I’d appreciate it more if we were naked.” 

“Well, I guess I can’t argue with that,” McCoy says. His voice comes out husky, and the kid’s pupils dilate a little more than they already were in response. 

“Huh. I didn’t think you were going to say yes,” the kid says, cocking his head to the side. He sounds genuinely surprised. McCoy has to laugh. After all that bravado, he’s professing his uncertainty? Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye. 

McCoy’s starting to like him. 

“I’m full of surprises. Wait, does this mean you don’t want to?” McCoy asks teasingly, then shrugs as if it’s all the same to him, “Because if you don’t, I can always— ” 

The kid leans closer, and the heat’s back in his eyes. He licks his lips again before he speaks: that seems to be a habit of his. “No. You’re fucking me tonight. End of story.” 

“What if I want you to fuck me?” McCoy breathes, purely to see the kid’s reaction. Purely. 

He gets what he wants: the kid’s fingers clutch harder at his shoulder, almost painfully so, and his eyes flutter shut as he lets out a soft groan. It’s if he’s already _there._ McCoy is enthralled. 

This kid is something. 

His eyes open again barely three seconds later, but it feels like at least a minute to McCoy. “Mm, that southern drawl is hot. _Fuck._ I’m not picky, trust me. I’ll fuck you. In fact, we can do it both ways if you want. Let’s just get out of here so I can get my mouth on your cock.” 

God, he’s spilling absolute _filth_ and McCoy is just eating it up. The fact that it’s been a while since he last had sex is definitely a contributing factor, but even if he’d just gotten laid ten minutes ago he’d still want this kid. And he’s not particularly fond of one-night stands. 

“Hold your horses, cowboy,” McCoy grunts. He reaches down to rifle in his pocket for money and the kid’s eyes follow his hand raptly, as if he thinks McCoy is going to unzip his pants and start something right here at the bar in a crowded club with a dozen people watching. 

That thought shouldn’t turn him on as much as it does. 

He sets the money on the counter and nods at the bartender, who looks between him and the kid with a knowing smirk. Nosy bastard. McCoy resists the urge to take back his tip. The kid, who McCoy is fast discovering is completely impatient, grabs his upper arm and hauls him through the club, past flashing lights and grinding bodies and out the door to the calm chill of night. 

The quiet is abrupt. The pounding music is now just a dull hum, but it’ll probably stay lingering in McCoy’s ears for hours. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, excitement rushing through him just as quickly as the oxygen through his veins. 

“What’s your name, kid?” he asks. 

“Jim Kirk. You?” 

Kirk. That name sounds familiar, but McCoy is too drunk to remember from where. “McCoy. Leonard McCoy. Don’t call me Leonard.”

“Okay, Leonard,” Jim says with a cheeky smile. 

McCoy smacks him on the back of the head. 

“Ouch, okay _McCoy_.” 

 

**THREE.**

McCoy is busy, stressed out, and pissed off. Earlier that morning, one of his superior medical officers decided to take the weekend off and leave him the responsibility of doing medical inventory for the entire Academy. 

The higher-ups would call it _delegation._

McCoy calls it _being a lazy asshole._

Now he has to take care of patients, keep the nurses up to speed, give the interns things to do that they won’t be able to royally fuck up, _and_ do the inventory. 

It is not his best day ever. 

“Dr. McCoy?” 

“What?” he snaps, glaring up at one of his interns over an invoice of all the antibiotics they’re required to have in stock, a fourth of which they don’t have and will probably never use and McCoy will have to order, and then organize, anyway. Whoever did the inventory before him was a fucking moron. 

He feels a little guilty for his gruff tone when he notices the intern looks like she wants to run off, hide in a closet, and cry, but he’s got more important things to worry about. There’s always an intern crying somewhere; if he got all sappy over every one, he’d never get anything done. 

“A patient needs to see you,” she says, sounding a little uncertain. 

“They can’t see someone else? I’m a little busy here.” 

“I know sir, but he asked for you specifically. He won’t see anyone else.” She pauses and then, a little too eagerly, says, “I could take over, if you’d like.” 

“No, that’s alright,” McCoy sighs, standing up and wincing at the way his knees pop. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. What room is the patient in?” 

“Right across the hall.” 

“Thanks.” 

The intern nods, smiles, and scurries off. Interns. 

Well, whoever this patient is, their brain better be hemorrhaging in six different places, because that’s the only situation dire enough to pull McCoy away from his work when there are dozens of other people in this very room certified to deal with this situation that aren’t him. 

And if it isn’t, it’s going to be. 

As irritated as McCoy is, he’s actually a little glad to be pulled away from that blasted paperwork. The words were starting to go blurry on the page, and, on top of that, he’s got a headache that’s been exponentially increasing in intensity of pain since he woke up this morning. He’s going to have to jab himself with a painkiller before he grabs something quick for lunch. After, of course, he finishes with this patient. Then he’ll have get back to the paperwork. 

McCoy curses colorfully under his breath and enters the room. 

There’s a young male cadet sitting on the bed kicking his feet. When he hears the door close, he sits up straighter, cocks his head to the side, looks McCoy up and down, and smirks. 

McCoy raises an eyebrow. 

“You’re Dr. McCoy?” the cadet asks. 

“That’s me. So, who are you and what life-threatening problem do you have that only _I_ could solve?” 

“Jim Kirk,” he says, amused interest coming through in the tone of his voice, and in the look on his face. McCoy finds that strange, as most patients are put off by his gruff bedside manner, not entertained by it. 

“Okay, _Jim._ Now answer my second question,” McCoy says, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to look stern and disapproving. Jim just smiles. Then he reaches for the zipper of his jeans. 

“Wha— ” McCoy starts, but is then stunned speechless. 

His eyebrow might have hit the ceiling. 

“My dick is purple,” Jim says, pointing to the (quite impressive) evidence of his statement. 

There is a brief silence. 

“Your dick is purple,” McCoy echoes, scratching his head. “Okay, your dick is purple. Uh, how long has your dick been purple?” 

“Since last night, after I slept with this purple chick. Have you ever seen purple tits? They are _awesome_ ,” Jim smiles dreamily for a moment, then continues, “I think she might’ve given me something. Seeing as my dick is purple.”

McCoy nods, hoping his eyes don’t look as crazy as they feel. 

“Look, you’ve got to keep this quiet. I asked for you because I’ve heard you’re discreet and I can’t have the entire Academy knowing I’m down for the count.” 

“You realize that the Hippocratic Oath—”

“Has been more of a suggestion than a mandate since the 22nd century? Your nurses gossip. And your interns. _Trust_ me.” 

McCoy frowns. He would like to defend his staff, but if he said they didn’t gossip he’d be lying. He’ll have to have A Talk with them later. Again. Right now, he has to deal with this odd STD. He’s never seen anything like this before. 

He sighs, rubs his temple, and walks over to the bed for a closer look. 

“Is the erection part of it, or did you just have a fun morning?” McCoy grumbles as he checks for any other symptoms: rashes, sores, lesions and the like. There doesn’t seem to be anything else wrong with the skin, besides it being purple. It’s a dark, even shade over most of the shaft, but the veins and higher-density areas like the glans and the scrotum are even darker, edging in on a deep indigo. 

It’s unreal. 

“Yeah, it is,” Jim says, sounding a little uneasy, “It won’t go down. I jerked off like three times this morning. Nothing helps.” 

McCoy’s brain very helpfully supplies the image of Jim jerking his purple dick off with a comically astonished look on his face. It then switches, _without McCoy’s permission,_ to Jim jerking off normally, fingers slick with pre-come, blue eyes half-lidded, lower lip bitten red and swollen. 

Jesus. 

McCoy shakes his head and resolutely ignores the twitch his cock gives. He’s just tired and sexually frustrated, is all. His cock’s interest in this has nothing to do with how attractive Jim is. Which is something McCoy is definitely not noticing. At all. 

“So, what should I do?” Jim asks. He looks a little worried, and McCoy realizes that having a very frustrated facial expression while staring intently at someone’s penis might indeed indicate that he intends to amputate, possibly violently and without anesthesia. He has trouble keeping those looks in check, especially when he’s turned on at the same time. And yes, he knows this from experience. 

“Hmm,” he muses, turning his head to the side in a calculating gesture. “I’m going to give you the standard cocktail of antibiotics and anti-virals, see if that does anything to help.” He then, a little hesitantly, reaches out a hand to touch Jim’s dick, lightly and very _medically._ He has to check if Jim’s engorged to a dangerous extent. Kid doesn’t need his dick exploding just because McCoy’s having a weird day. 

“Are you experiencing any pain, or discomfort?”

McCoy’s fingers stroke gently, clinically, up the shaft, pressing in as lightly as they can. Jim sucks in his breath and lets it out on a moan, hips shifting just a little. 

McCoy rolls his eyes even as his own cock is throbbing and pulls his hand away, a little quicker than he’d intended to. “Guess that answers my question. I’d tell you to keep it in your pants, but we’re past that already. So, put it _back_ in your pants.” His voice doesn’t shake at all, thank god. He can’t believe himself. He’s acting like a fucking teenage girl. 

Jim smiles a little sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s just— really sensitive.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Well, it doesn’t look like anything permanently damaging. Hold on a second.” McCoy turns around and opens a drawer full of vials of different sizes and color, all carefully arranged. He pulls out a large vial of an indescribable color and loads his hypospray. 

“Are you allergic to anything you know of, or are you taking any medications?” McCoy asks as he turns back around. Jim is gingerly zipping up his jeans and McCoy is _not_ looking at the hard line of his erection against the denim. He’s not. 

Damn it, what is _wrong_ with him today? 

“No, and no,” Jim answers.

“Good,” McCoy says, then jabs the hypospray into Jim’s neck.

“Ow! Fucking— damn it, that hurt!” Jim yelps, clapping a hand over his neck. 

McCoy scoffs. “Don’t be such an infant.” 

Jim glares. 

“Do I have to give you a lollipop? That’s what I do for all my patients that are _children_.” 

“I’d appreciate a lollipop, actually. Cherry flavor.”

“I was joking. I’m not giving you a lollipop because you couldn’t keep it in your pants, for god’s sake. Now, I’d like to see you back here in two days for a check-up, but if your symptoms worsen, come back immediately. Wouldn’t want your dick falling off, now would we?” 

“Oh, _you_ certainly wouldn’t,” Jim says with a leer, that same smirk from when McCoy first walked in gracing his face again. 

“No, I wouldn’t. Most doctors don’t want their patients’ appendages falling off.” 

McCoy does not find that smirk attractive, he _doesn’t._

“Sure,” Jim says, hopping off the bed, “That’s all it is.” He takes a few steps closer, completely invading McCoy’s personal space. “I’ll come back in two days. And then, after that,” Jim pauses, resting a hand lightly on McCoy’s hip. He then leans dangerously close and breathes, “I’m gonna fuck you.” 

“Excuse me?” If he was a girl, that probably would’ve come out as a squeak. It’s already in a higher octave than he cares to admit, and he’s not sure, but he thinks his voice may have cracked a little. 

Damn it. 

“Later, doc,” Jim says, walking out before McCoy can say another word. He was thinking up some pretty disparaging ones, too. 

McCoy stands there, shell-shocked and hard with an empty hypospray in his hands, and finds that, along with wondering what the _hell_ just happened, he’s actually looking forward to seeing Jim for his check-up. And not because of what Jim proposed, the cheeky fucker. McCoy draws some kind of large, blinking, neon line _all_ over sleeping with former patients who came to him with STDs that turned their dick purple. He’s simply looking forward to seeing Jim again. More than he’s looked forward to anything, other than a night off and a bottle of bourbon, in quite some time.

“Fucking weird day,” he mutters to himself, before returning to his inventory. 

 

**FOUR.**

The kid who sits next to McCoy in his Intergalactic Diplomacy class has never once shown up. McCoy’s been at the Academy for three months, and every Tuesday the seat next to him is empty. 

McCoy’s seat is next to the wall. This means that there is no one within Friendly Whisper Distance to bother him. No one at all. Besides the professor babbling on overly-excitedly about what McCoy has deduced generally boils down to “Don’t Be a Jackass to Aliens”, it is blissfully quiet in the classroom for an entire hour. 

McCoy finds this setup highly preferable to the seating arrangements in his other classes. 

So far today, and this is just today, he’s had to deal with inane gossip about someone named James Kirk whispered over, behind, and in front of his head, a wadded ball of paper clipping him in the forehead, a female cadet sobbing loudly over her boyfriend or her grade point average or her hair (or maybe all three: McCoy couldn’t quite tell past all the tears and mucus) while her friend tried to comfort her with incredibly irritating platitudes, and one young cadet placing a note on his desk with a conspiratorial smile as if he actually expected McCoy to _pass it on_. The cadet quickly snatched it back when he saw the look on McCoy’s face, but the damage was already done. 

Needless to say, he is thoroughly looking forward to Intergalactic Diplomacy today. He sits down in his chair with a relieved sigh, sets his books on the empty seat next to him, and pulls out his PADD to “take notes”. He opens up his game of Tetris from his last save point and waits for a backwards L-shaped piece while the rest of the cadets shuffle in and the professor writes something on the board. 

“Are these yours?” 

McCoy ignores this question, as he’s sure it’s aimed at somebody else. No one in this class ever talks to him, thank god. 

“Hello? Hey. Hey. Hey!” 

That person who asked the question that definitely wasn’t aimed at him because no one in this class ever talks to him pokes him in the shoulder. 

“What?” McCoy asks irritably, looking up from his PADD to find a young male cadet staring at him petulantly. McCoy’s never seen him before. 

“Are these your books?” the cadet asks, looking pointedly at the stack of textbooks on the chair next to McCoy. 

“Yes. What of it?” 

“They’re in my seat.” 

Oh. Oh, shit. 

“Your seat?” McCoy asks cautiously, a heavy sense of dread settling over him like an itchy, suffocating blanket, a blanket someone then used to smother his blissful peace with, which they then clubbed in the head with a baseball bat just to make sure it’s dead. 

“Yes, _my_ seat. Could you maybe move them, please?” It’s a completely insincere plea. In fact, McCoy would go so far as to call it _bitchy._ The kid’s even got his hands on his hips, elbows akimbo in a pose unpleasantly reminiscent of his ex-wife towards the end of their marriage. 

McCoy sighs, heavily, and reluctantly moves his books to the floor between his feet. 

Jocelyn always won the arguments with that look. 

“Thank you,” the kid quips, plopping down next to McCoy. 

“Just my fucking luck,” McCoy mutters, returning to his game of Tetris with a scowl. He forgot to pause it and missed the backwards L-shaped piece. 

\---

With the help of his fair-weather friends excessive amounts of alcohol and insanely complicated medical texts, McCoy has almost completely forgotten about his encounter with the cadet who murdered his day a week back. Almost. He’s looking forward to Intergalactic Diplomacy that Tuesday, as he always does. 

But then, everything comes rushing back when he gets to his row of seats and sees the very same blond cadet sitting in the seat that’s supposed to be _empty_ , with his stupid feet up on the seat in front of him. Cocky jackass. McCoy hadn’t dared try that for fear of getting punching in the face by the beefy guy who sat in front of him, but the cute young female cadet sitting in front of Blond Jackass seems perfectly fine with it. 

McCoy scowls. 

“Put your damn feet down,” he growls when he gets to The Seat That Should Be Empty But Isn’t. Blond Jackass shrugs, drops his feet back to the floor where they belong, and puts his hands up in a placating gesture. McCoy scowls some more as he pushes past the kid’s stupid boney knees, sitting down with a huff. His books go on the floor again. 

Well, this is just a nice rotten cherry on top of the shit sundae that is his day. He pulls out his PADD and furiously plays out his frustration in a game of Space Invaders, imaging Blond Jackass at the helm of every whistling, beeping spaceship before he blasts it into oblivion. 

“Do you mind if I ask what your problem is?” Blond Jackass asks a few minutes later, eyeing McCoy warily. 

“Oh, don’t even go there, kid. Why don’t you just shut your trap and learn about the fascinating art of not pissing off aliens that want to kill you and eat your flesh?” McCoy grumbles, indicating the badly drawn diagram their professor is currently constructing on the board about… something with a tilt of his head. 

“Sorry, Your Highness. Could you at least tell me what I did to piss you off so royally?” 

“You sat down,” McCoy snaps. 

“Wow. _Okay_ then. I had no idea my ass hitting a seat could get someone so incensed. I’ll make sure to be careful of that from now on,” he says sarcastically, letting out an incredulous laugh. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “Is that seriously _all_ I did? Usually it’s more than that. Did I fuck your girlfriend or something?”

“ _No_ , you did not—where do you get off asking something like that?” McCoy splutters. 

“Not in your girlfriend’s bed, evidently,” he says with a snicker. 

“I’m guessing you get your ass kicked a lot?”

“About once a week, yeah.” 

“I can see why.”

\---

It’s Tuesday again, and McCoy is no longer naïve enough to hope Blond Jackass won’t be sitting next to him in Intergalactic Diplomacy. 

It’s too late for hope. 

Sure enough, McCoy gets to class and climbs the steps to his row and there he is, sitting in The Seat That Should Be Empty But Isn’t like he owns the damn thing. The scowl is back, right on schedule. 

“Hello, _Leonard_ ,” Blond Jackass says with a mischievous smile. The cute girl in front of him giggles because she obviously told Blond Jackass his name, and McCoy makes a mental note to dislike her. 

“Don’t call me Leonard,” he snaps. McCoy pushes past Blond Jackass’ legs without giving him a chance to move them, leaving him scrunched up awkwardly in his chair with his knees to his chest and a frown on his stupid pretty face. He puts his feet back on the floor with deliberation, glaring at McCoy. 

“Okay. I’m going to ask again. What’s your fucking problem?” 

“Why did you suddenly start coming to class?” McCoy asks instead of answering his question, because he really is curious. 

The kid looks put out for a moment, but then he answers. “Because the professor said he’d fail me if I didn’t ‘participate’, despite the fact that I passed all his class work and have aced every quiz so far. I had to drop the more interesting class I was in for this bullshit.” 

McCoy nods, not quite sure what else to say. He has to sympathize with Blond Jackass a little bit for thinking this class is bullshit. 

“Is that your problem? That I started showing up?” 

After a short pause, McCoy says, “I liked the empty seat.” 

He feels stupid and petty the moment it’s out of his mouth, but it’s the truth. And maybe it’s more than that, something having to do with space issues and anger issues, but he’s not about to go psycho-analyzing himself. He’s a doctor, not a psychiatrist. 

There’s another pause, and then the kid says, “I can guarantee you’ll like _me_ even more.” 

McCoy scoffs. “Really? Guarantee? You’ve got quite an ego on you, kid.” 

“Ask anyone. I’m eager to please, and damn good at it.” The kid then looks at McCoy with what McCoy is 97% sure is a leer. A _leer._

For Christ’s sake. 

“Are you _hitting_ on me?” McCoy asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Maybe.” 

“Did you smack your head against the wall repeatedly as a child?” 

“Every day.” 

McCoy can’t help but laugh at that. Blond Jackass smiles good-naturedly, and he suddenly doesn’t look quite as fitting of that nickname. 

Well, maybe losing The Empty Seat isn’t such a bad thing after all. He hasn’t had this much fun in a social interaction since before he and Jocelyn started _fighting_ -fighting. No one else has been able to match and parry his scornful wit since her. Not until now. Not until this kid. 

“I’m Leonard McCoy,” he says with a sigh, holding out his hand in what might be the biggest mistake or the best decision of his life. “But I guess you already know that. You also know not to call me Leonard.” 

“Jim Kirk,” Jim says with a smile, shaking McCoy’s hand with a strong, calloused grip. 

Ah, _that_ Jim Kirk. From the inane gossip. Now the leering makes a little more sense, and the gossip doesn’t seem quite as inane now that he knows who Jim Kirk is. He’s heard some… interesting things. 

Jim relaxes into what McCoy is now willing to call _Jim’s_ seat, and a comfortable silence settles between them. 

About twenty minutes later, Jim says, “So, I’ve decided we’re going to be best friends,” completely out of the blue. 

Jim seems like an out of the blue kind of person. 

McCoy is somehow not surprised. “Is that so?” he asks, amused. 

“Yep,” Jim says, and puts his feet back up on the chair in front of him. 

McCoy smiles. 

 

**FIVE.**

McCoy is up to his elbows in blood, his scrubs spattered with arterial spray as he tries to remove bullet fragments from a young man’s chest. The wound itself is two inches away from his heart, but the bullet’s trajectory upon impact sent little metal shards cutting through flesh dangerously close to the organ. One had already sliced through part of the aortic arch before the ambulance had arrived at the med bay. As a result, McCoy is not only removing fragments with painstaking accuracy, but also trying to keep pressure on the kid’s chest to keep him from bleeding out while one of his colleagues attempts to stitch up the quickly deflating artery. The kid’s already lost two pints of blood, according the EMTs report and McCoy’s own calculations. 

It’s _this_ close to a lost cause and everyone knows it, but he can’t give up. 

He can’t lose this kid. 

He’s been working for 46 hours straight, and he’s been on his feet in this surgery for the last three of those hours. He’s tired and depressed and he can’t take a hit like this. He just can’t. 

His nurses are standing around trying to hide their concern, all of them on edge waiting for his next order. They’re all thinking the same thing, but no one dares say it. 

McCoy drops another fragment into the dish. Five out of nine. 

The machine flatlines. 

“Paddles, now!” McCoy barks . 

A nurse cranks up the voltage on the defibrillator and tosses the paddles to McCoy, who then shocks the unopened portion of the kid’s chest. 

No change. 

“Higher!” 

The nurse hesitantly turns the voltage up. 

McCoy shocks him again. 

Nothing. 

He charges the paddles and shocks him again. 

Nothing. _Fuck._

“Higher, damn it!” 

“Dr. McCoy.” Nurse Chapel is behind him all of a sudden, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. She wants him to give up before he gets too emotionally invested and hurts himself, but he can’t give up on this one. He shakes her off and demands the nurse turn up the voltage again. She looks frightened, and she doesn’t move to follow his order. 

“Leonard,” Christine says softly, “He’s gone. It’s over.” 

Everything stops. 

McCoy stares down at the man on his operating table. His face is scarred and bruised, and smudged with blood, the same blood his blond hair is sticky and flecked with. McCoy knows he has blue eyes, even though he can’t see them right now. When they brought him in he was still conscious, and he stared dazedly at McCoy for an endless half-second with shockingly blue eyes before he went into shock. 

He has to open those eyes. He has to be okay. 

McCoy looks down at the blood on his hands, at the still heart beneath his fingertips. 

“No. _No._ We can save him.”

He lunges past the shell-shocked nurse, turns the voltage up to maximum, grabs the paddles and shocks the young man’s chest with vigor. 

One last time. This is it. 

The room is silent but for the endless whine of the EKG. 

Then, suddenly, the whine morphs into an erratic beep _beep_ beep _beep,_ and time rushes back. It’s faint, but it’s there: his heart is beating again. Chapel steps away and orders her nurses back into action, siphoning blood and handing out surgical instruments and providing new rolls of gauze. McCoy works quickly to remove the last few fragments, and once the wound is clear, clamps the just-stitched wall of the artery and cauterizes it. 

The nurses clear out the rest of the coagulating blood and McCoy closes up the wound. 

His heart is still beating. 

Nurse Chapel gets him hooked up for a transfusion to replace the massive amount of blood he’s lost. 

His heart is still beating. 

McCoy watches as Christine and one of the interns bandage up the patient, watches his chest rising and falling and the color returning to his skin. 

His heart is still beating. 

“Leonard. Go clean up. Get some sleep,” Christine says, sounding as tired as he feels. 

McCoy realizes he’s still covered in the kid’s blood. He nods and heads to one of the staff bathrooms: he has to clean up, but he’s not going to sleep. He can’t. 

He strips off his scrubs and dumps them in the hazmat bin, along with his gloves and his facemask, then scrubs his arms and hands clean at the sink with disinfectant soap. He gets into the shower, and the warm water against his skin feels so good it hurts. 

He knows he’s on the verge of collapse when he gets out of the shower, but he’s still got adrenalin rushing through his bloodstream at a breakneck speed that’s preventing him from feeling it. As soon as that wears off, he’s going to crash. Hard. 

He grabs a clean pair of scrubs from his locker and dresses clumsily, all his muscles aching with every movement. He’s dragging his feet and his eyelids are starting to droop by the time he walks back into the med bay. 

Christine sighs when she sees him, but she knew he wasn’t going to sleep. “At least you’re clean.” 

He stares at his patient’s bed, trying to figure out the strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What’s his name?” he asks. 

Christine follows his line of sight. “Jim. Jim Kirk.” 

McCoy nods. That fits. 

He walks over to Jim’s bed and stands over him. Stands over him and watches him live. Listens to the EKG beep. Beep. Beep. He sits in the chair next to the bed and lets out a weighty breath. 

It’s over. Jim’s safe. 

He falls asleep so fast he doesn’t even remember closing his eyes. 

\---

“Doctor McCoy. Doctor. Leonard! He’s waking up.”

McCoy starts awake, his head snapping up so fast his neck cracks. He sees Christine, and she gestures to the right. McCoy is still shaking off the haze of sleep, but his brain kicks back into gear fast as lightning when he remembers. Jim. 

He stands up and puts a hand on the bed to steady himself on his wobbly legs. He’s still exhausted, but sleep can wait. 

“Jim?” 

Jim stirs under his blanket, stretches his limbs a little. 

“Jim. Wake up.” 

He grunts, and opens his eyes a crack. They’re just as blue as McCoy remembered. 

“This is the worst hangover ever,” he mumbles, then closes his eyes again. McCoy almost laughs, but that would be inappropriate. His semblance of a bedside manner is already hanging by a thread. 

“Jim. You got shot.” 

“I-I what?” Jim’s eyes fly open and stay open this time. He sits up quickly, then winces, evidently feeling the pain in his abdomen. 

“Lay back right now! You’re gonna tear your stitches!” McCoy shouts. 

Jim does as he’s told, though he looks a little put out. McCoy ignores his sad puppy eyes and checks the wound, just to be sure. He’s not having this kid bleed out _now._ That would just be cruel. 

Once Jim’s settled back into bed and McCoy is satisfied that his stitches are holding, Jim quietly asks, “What the hell happened to me?” He’s not looking at McCoy, but at the EKG machine mapping out his heartbeat. 

“I don’t know. You don’t remember?” 

“No.” 

McCoy sighs. “Well, you came in with a bunch of bruises. Did you get in a fight?” 

Jim laughs, humorlessly. “You don’t know it, but that’s a stupid question.”

McCoy furrows his brow and sits down again, pulling his chair closer to Jim’s bed. The look in the kid’s eyes has got him worried. Not as worried as he was when he was bleeding out in his OR, but not much can compare to that. “You get in fights a lot, Jim?” 

Jim doesn’t answer. 

McCoy sighs again. “I’ll take that as a yes. I guess this time it got out of hand, huh? You almost _died_.” 

There is a silence between them, heavy with… something. Something McCoy can’t name. 

“You saved me?” Jim says finally, looking up at McCoy with those bright blue eyes. They’re like the fucking sky, or something as equally sappy. He’s obviously sleep-deprived, waxing poetic the way he is about the color of someone’s irises. They’re just eyes. Just Jim’s eyes. 

“He did.” McCoy hears Christine say, out of nowhere. He glares up at her, trying to communicate his disproval of eavesdropping through his eyebrows, but she just smiles and walks away. Women. 

“It wasn’t just me. And that’s not important, anyway. What is important is you keeping yourself away from bullets from now on. No more fighting. You’re not invincible. I don’t want to see you back on my operating table anytime soon, you hear me?” 

“What’s your name?”

McCoy frowns. 

“Promise me first, and then I’ll tell you.”

“I’ll try,” Jim says. He sounds sincere. 

“McCoy. Leonard McCoy.” 

“Nice to meet you, Leonard McCoy,” Jim says with a smile. Even though it’s a little weak around the edges, it’s still startlingly bright. Brighter than McCoy would be smiling after getting shot in the chest, that’s for sure. 

“If all our meetings start the way this one did, you might want to stay in the med bay permanently. And I might go ahead and have a heart attack right here and now to save myself the trouble.” 

Jim laughs, and the corner of McCoy’s mouth quirks up just a little.

“Alright Jim, you need to get some sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

“Good.” 

McCoy considers giving Jim a sedative, but Jim calls out to him sleepily before he can grab his hypospray. “Doctor McCoy?” 

“What, Jim?”

“Where am I?”

“The med bay at Starfleet Academy. San Francisco.”

Jim lets out what sounds like a laugh. “Well, fuck. If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is. Remind me to enlist when I wake up,” Jim mutters into his pillow. He slurs something else McCoy thinks sounds like ‘Four years? Do it in three,’ and then he’s fast asleep. 

Jim does end up spending most of his time in the medical bay, or anywhere else McCoy (or _Bones_ as Jim affectionately starts calling him) happens to be, but McCoy doesn’t have a heart attack. 

Jim steals his heart before he gets the chance.


End file.
